Underrated Anime — I Don’t Need That, I Have My K-ON!

In every anime sea­son, there’s always the great ones that are well dis­cussed around. It’s like say­ing that once you see a char­ac­ter from the series that for one second, you know where he/she comes from. That is what I call exposure.

And there are oth­ers which are silently men­tioned. Not much atten­tion is given to these sort of anime because they are over­shad­owed by the big­ger and more anti­cip­ated ones. Yet, if looked upon closely there are some hid­den gems lying around in every anime sea­son. These are three that are least expec­ted to be favoured (apart from Higashi no Eden, but nev­er­the­less it still is over­shad­owed by a bunch of girls who plays music week in, week out).

Pres­id­ents Aria, Hime and Maa takes the spot­light for under­rated series!

Note: I rate these series as under­rated due to its nature of not being talked about in many areas.

Den­nou Coil (2007)

As we wit­ness an overly-gigantic mecha bat­tling for the uni­verse, four high school girls talk­ing ran­dom stuff and psy­cho­lo­gical Con­tract­ors, there is but one series that silently spring a sur­prise with its depth of storyline and inter­est­ing concept. Den­nou Coil was about kids liv­ing in a world where aug­men­ted real­ity (AR) sur­rounds their every­day lives. As the kids are one by one taken to the world of “real­ity”, a group of kids under an invest­ig­at­ive agnecy are sent to solve the con­spir­acy behind these kidnappings.

With beau­ti­fully designed char­ac­ters and a pic­tur­esque land­scape, Den­nou Coil was the most silent of the lot of series that were present at that sea­son. It won me over for its storyline and plot devel­op­ment. Not to men­tion the concept of AR that really draws me into it.

Fumie and Oyaji from ‘Den­nou Coil’

Aria (2005)

Aria is a series with a col­lec­tion of tales that occur in Neo Venezia of Planet Aqua. It starts off with the intro­duc­tion of Akari who aspires to be an undine. Through every epis­ode, we are show­cased with her and her two best friends, Aika and Alice. Each epis­ode has a deeper mean­ing to the story, where life les­sons will be shown at some point.

It star­ted off at a slow pace, but what can you expect from a slice-of-life series? With shows like Shak­ugan no Shana, Blood+ and Fate/stay night steal­ing all the lime­light, it’s no won­der why some may skip this show for a more action-paced series. How­ever, if you take your time to watch it you can really appre­ci­ate the love that the char­ac­ters give out. Oh yeah, and this is where you see three main things: water, gon­dolas and cats!

Alice, Akari and Aika from ‘Aria’

Higashi no Eden (2009)

How can any­one for­get the ever pop­u­lar “Johnny” scene (via Ran­dom Curi­os­ity) from Higashi no Eden? Well many would, since they would rather fall for five girls who are still get­ting their groove in music. Heck, K-ON! was tipped to be the best series of this year! How­ever, the end­ing of Higashi no Eden won me over. The story star­ted off with the meet­ing of a stark-naked and amnesic Akira, and gull­ible Saki in Wash­ing­ton. As they returned home to Japan, they learned of another mis­sile attack on it. When Akira delves deeper into find­ing his true iden­tity, he uncov­ers the mys­tery of a game that he and a few oth­ers are playing.

The end­ing left every­one with an appet­ite for more, but with a story like this who wouldn’t be? This series my pick in the spring sea­son in terms of devel­op­ment, pace and expan­sion. Now to wait for the two movies to be released!

Akira and Saki from ‘Higashi no Eden’

Final Words

These are my three picks of series to watch if you have the time to con­sume slow-paced series. Thick plots like Den­nou Coil and Higashi no Eden require some time to digest; light hearted Aria is a joy to watch when you are look­ing for a change of pace. They will be worth your time.

Any other series that you think should be men­tioned in this list?

This guest post was writ­ten by jusuchin85. jusuchin85 has been a lover of anime and manga since 2002. His pas­sion for it eas­ily makes him stand out from the crowd with his chant that “anime is bet­ter than reg­u­lar series”. You can fol­low him on Twit­ter or read his blog, Otak­uism, Everyday!